Frictional Games Teases Next Horror Title

Frictional Games is the independent studio that developed the 2010 horror hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The studio has finally started to tease it's next project.

Frictional Games just updated the website for its next game, which could be called Soma, and it looks like the developer will be slowly releasing clues about the next project on that site. Check out the teaser trailer, labeled DESC: Appendix A, case file #2656, below. It's doesn't make a lot of sense, but maybe you can piece this puzzle together.

Our TakeThis looks cool. The trailer is a fairly slow build, but I was a fan of the first Amnesia, and considering that the second game didn't quit hold up to the level of the first, I'm excited to know more about what the original team is doing. We'll just have to be patient, and breath slowly...which isn't easy when you're talking about horror games.

I really look forward to what frictional does next. Despite how good they are, I still really enjoyed a machine for pigs. In my opinion, if they would have just buffed the length by an hour or two and added some actual worthwhile puzzles it would have been great. It definitely nailed the amnesia story, the kind that unfolds in your mind the more you think about it, and you just can't stop thinking about it. They managed to get that right, yet do a completely different story and theme to the original.

The main flaw with the story was that we just didn't have enough time to get attached to mandus and his plight. There is one scene near the midpoint of the game where Mandus begins to narrate his emotional state now that he comes so close to his objective. I hated that I didn't care as much for that scene as I should have, as it was a very well done scene, but I just didn't have enough time. I felt like I barely knew mandus. As much as I wanted to care as much as he did, I couldn't.

Where the story lacked in that regard, it made up for it in the final act. Where TDD's ending arc was quite slow paced and prepared you well for what was coming, (Especially with the addition of a surprise late game ally) AMFP's final arc was unsettling in a completely different way from the subtle fear induced by the torture chambers of TDD. All of the strange clues you had been picking up on throughout, and all of the games strange themes begin to make sense faster than you yourself can make sense of them. It would have felt even stronger if we had longer to get attached to mandus and really know him, but that does little to take away from one of the strongest final arcs in any game I have played.

I'm grateful for that, even if other parts of the game didn't quite hold up to the name.

So, they scavenged this monitor while on a salvage mission. At some point, they stumbled upon some complex instructions. They were going to disassemble it, but this engineer asked for a chance to figure it out. They allow her to do so, and this is what happens. It looks like she mapped out the room, then calibrated the machine... And then it finally recreated not only the room, but her, inside the machine. I'm guessing from the title that this is some form of digital vivarium. Who knows what kind of repercussions could be borne from this. I'm not entirely sure why she freaks out as much as she does, though. She must have had an idea what was happening when she mapped the room. I would have thought she'd be more curious, than terrified.

Although, to her credit, whenever you watch a horror movie, you know things are going to end badly. As soon as something like this happens, you yell at the TV, trying to tell them to stop, to just shut it down. But they don't, they carry on like idiots until they're all brutally murdered. Maybe she knew that, and wasn't going to waste any time. I can't help but feel like it's probably a little too late, however.